Americans as a society hate cities, even as most of them live in a city. From Thomas Jefferson to Frank Lloyd Wright and so many others, key thinkers about American life have fundamentally distrusted
One major problem with American public transportation is the incredibly high cost of construction. Another is the spread out nature of American cities. How does one create functional public transporta
The Metropole is the blog of the Urban History Association and it is spending this month running a series of essays on the legacy of the interstate highway system. Something that is well-known among h
Since this is a topic we are already discussing today, I think another post is not too much. The reality is that a broken housing market combined with record income inequality has created a situation
Tonight’s selection is this 1972 documentary about Boston’s North End, titled Little Italy. I’ve gotten to know the neighborhood a bit over the years living in Providence. But what I
In today’s podcast, I interview Andrew Sandoval-Strausz from Penn State University about his 2019 book Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City. This is an absolutely fascin
Amen to this: Today, the coronavirus pandemic, in all its horror, opens the prospect of sweeping urban change. Cities suddenly see the possibility of correcting their greatest mistake of the 20th cent
One thing about living through a pandemic is that it’s a good time to discuss other pandemics. One of the biggest public health issues in the 19th century was cholera, with three mass epidemics: